


eat the rich

by gracelesso



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Shrunkyclunks, canapé fetishization, horrible jobs, rich people parties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:21:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29809710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracelesso/pseuds/gracelesso
Summary: “On your left you have a shiitake mushroom mousse on a cracked barley tuile with yuzu jelly; that’s tamarind-glazed duck breast on the skewers; the spoons are a miso-poached quail egg with pickled horseradish broth; and finally, we have a deconstructed prawn cocktail.”Having rattled off this incomprehensible litany in record time, Bucky glances up to check the guy’s response. It’s only by divine intervention that the slate doesn’t clatter to the floor.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 23
Kudos: 153





	eat the rich

**5.48pm**  
Bucky adjusts the hem of a dense linen tablecloth for the fourth time and steps back to evaluate his handiwork. It's not straight, not really, but there's no gapping at the bottom and the ornamental metal whatever-the-fuck balanced on the corner is heavy enough that the cloth won't slide off midway through service. Might take a child's eye out, but that's very much not his problem.

This is without a doubt shaping up to be the worst shift of his 4-year stint in this reliably appalling job. The email hadn’t specified the role on offer, so he’d assumed it would be his usual slot behind the bar. The hourly was a little low, but it was a charity gig, so he hadn’t questioned it. Judging by the venue, the guests would be plenty able to tip well.

It’s not that the Met is _worse_ than any of the other venues he gets pimped out to, exactly. It’s that it isn’t any better. It’s the Met, so front of house standards are sky fucking high, and the agency team leaders are always on edge because it’s _the Met, these are some of our most valuable clients, the service we deliver needs to be impeccable_ , and the younger team players are too busy gawping at the fact that they’re _in the Met_ to deliver anything close to impeccable service, and the kitchens are no less cramped and the service elevators no more reliable than anywhere else. Despite it being the fucking Met. And tonight he’s been deprived of his power behind the bar. This is going to be the shift from hell.

The one small blessing is that it’s only six hours, one to set up, one (nominally) for cleanup, and only four for service. Drinks and small food only, champagne to start, then an open bar and canapés circulating throughout, champagne again at 8.30 for a speech, some toasts, and some kind of presentation.

But when he’d showed up (at 4.55 on the nose, punctual to the letter of the law if not the spirit) some asshole with a mildly fascist haircut was already standing behind the bar, black shirtsleeves rolled. Bucky had brushed aside a quick and distracting thought re: getting involved with the man’s corded forearms - the haircut’s backed up by a jawline that’s 40% chiselled to 60% pugnacious - and gone hunting for the person in charge. It was Karlo, of course, and the neat little bastard clearly hasn’t forgotten That One Incident With The Bride’s Mother And The Raspberry Coulis. So when Bucky makes a perfectly reasonable inquiry as to what the fuck the guy with the oil slick smile is doing in his spot, Karlo takes obvious delight in telling him that oh, no - Brock’s doing the bar today and Bucky’s needed as team leader for the floor staff, and could he please get himself into an apron and tie and do something about his hair, it’s violating agency standards.

**6.23pm**  
On his way back for a third tray of champagne flutes - you'd think these people had been stranded in a desert, the rate they're swigging the stuff - Bucky catches a snatch of the younger ones getting excited about some celebrity they’d spotted. They're student types, and definitely from outside the city, so it doesn't really mean anything. By now he's seen kids like these go saucer-eyed over enough unidentifiable CW stars that he's developed a proximity radar for the real famous types, though. There's enough awe about the little gaggle that this is probably like, someone their dads would know.

He doesn’t ask. He’s been at this long enough that no famous face can faze him. He’s witnessed a Kushner drop turmeric-heavy sauce down his white tie and kept the smirk internal. At one corporate gig at Madame Tussauds (the worst venue in the city), he offered champagne to Morgan Freeman without blinking before realising it was a waxwork. It doesn’t matter how famous the guest might be - they’re just one more asshole waiting to _tsk_ when someone drops a champagne flute. He spends his journeys home fantasizing about balancing as much fine china as he can on the guests and seeing how long they last without smashing anything.

**6.52pm**  
Bucky comes back out of the kitchen with a half-inch-thick slate laden with culinary absurdities in massed ranks and a fully memorized list of names and descriptions, carefully ordered to draw attention to the ones he least wants to eat. Eating the leftovers is one of the few perks of being prized out from behind the bar, but there's a fine art to securing them. If you don't play it properly, it's very possible to wind up with a platter full of cracker shrapnel and sauce smears.

He scopes out the room from the sidelines until he spots a weird little eddy in the currents of people, where the crowd is packed a little tighter and the servers dart in and out like anxious minnows. Karlo catches his eye and jerks his glossy domed head at the space. Bucky looks it over, like a robber casing a jewelry store. There, in the middle. Dark blond hair, dark blue suit, well over six feet, torso like a pizza slice. Both hands shoved in his pockets.

Now that won't do at all. Bucky unfolds his most engaging smile and nods at Karlo. 

**6.57pm**  
Tall, blond and awkward is peering down like Bucky’s dealing in alien goods, not elaborate finger foods.

“What - are they?” He sounds apprehensive. Also, his voice is very deep and very calm. 

“These,” Bucky begins, and then stops short as the ceramic spoons chime a warning. Some pre-societal instinct to show off and make himself useful to the best pair of shoulders in the room had driven him, for one perilous second, to take a hand off the treacherous slate and _gesture_ at the canapés, as if his biceps aren’t already screaming under the weight of the fucking thing. He comes to his senses, secures his grip, and summons his best customer service voice without looking up at the man.

“On your left you have a shiitake mushroom mousse on a cracked barley tuile with yuzu jelly; that’s tamarind-glazed duck breast on the skewers; the spoons are a miso-poached quail egg with pickled horseradish broth; and finally, we have a deconstructed prawn cocktail.”

Having rattled off this incomprehensible litany in record time, Bucky glances up to check the guy’s response. It’s only by divine intervention that the slate doesn’t clatter to the floor.

**6.58pm**  
Bucky's soul has departed his shambling corpse and is mocking him from somewhere up near the ridiculous light fitting. It's probably better that way. He feels blissfully calm. 

**6.59pm**  
The out-of-body experience comes to an end, taking with it Bucky's peace of mind. Steve Rogers. Steve _fucking_ Rogers. _Steve_ fucking _ROGERS_. He can't feel his arms.

The good Captain is - well, he's moved on from grazing and is now consuming canapés like a man possessed, and the vengeful demon piloting his sizeable carcass is on a quest to do Bucky out of his due delicacies. The dusty politician-looking guy holding him hostage with the power of the social contract drones on at his little posse of blandly smiling victims, and Bucky stands there, trapped by the unnatural appetites of Captain America as he tackles the platter with the single-minded ruthlessness of a swarm of locusts.

**7.06pm**  
Bucky abandons the slate, ignoring the clatter of twenty ceramic spoons skidding onto stainless steel worktop, and hyperventilates into the coat rack until he hears an effete little cough. 

"Fuck off, Karlo," he says, unwisely. "Why aren't you on the floor terrorizing the kids?"

Another little cough, and then the aggressive tap of the man's stupid shiny shoes. Bucky waits until it recedes and he hears the brief swell of polite crowd noise as the door swings open and shut before requisitioning a new slate full of indescribables. 

**7.14pm**  
When he returns, the Goddamn Slate is laden with whipped celeriac crostini, bresaola-wrapped prunes, and mouthfuls of lobster bisque in tiny, edible bowls carved from translucent radish. He scopes out the Captain's big blond -- everything, and walks firmly in the opposite direction. The hall is vast, and so is Steve Rogers, so he feels optimistic about his chances of avoiding the man.

Bucky's luck holds for a few minutes, but just as his vigilance is beginning to waver, a predatory-looking woman with very deliberate glasses and sun damage on her bony chest calls out: "Oh, Captain Rogers! You must meet my partner Henry - I mentioned him to you earlier, he specialises in 20th century iconography."

Bucky glances around, desperate to avoid being trapped once again by the voracious but sadly non-carnal appetites of his teenage (oh, who's he trying to fool) crush. Henry reaches stolidly for another prune, preventing his escape. His eyes meet the Captain's.

**8.27**  
This is turning into a nightmare. Somehow there are still more than two hours left of this interminable shift. Everyone else has returned to champagne duty for the toasts, but Karlo snagged Bucky for a quick word, by which he meant 'assigning highly specific personalised revenge', so now he's on official Captain America Duty, which means shadowing Steve Rogers with an uninterrupted supply of finger foods. Since his hands came out of his pockets and his newfound passion was awakened, the man has demonstrated quite insatiable appetites. 

Bucky feels like he knows something about those right now. His upper body is screaming at him in pain but his lower body has other, equally raucous and insistent plans. 

He tries very hard to focus on the current and rapidly dwindling contents of his tray, where an oozing squadron of cheese parcels huddles in one corner. The lack of structural integrity has scared off even the bottomless pit of Steve Rogers' jailbroken stomach for fear of globbing cream down his perfect fucking be-suited chest.

Long story short, it doesn’t matter how much nervous energy or what sort of bullshit metabolism Captain America has: if he eats the last burrata and watercress roulade before it gets backstage, and deprives Bucky, a man who has spent the past three and a half hours juggling champagne flutes, motherfucking inch-thick slate serving planks, and condescending women in evening dresses who make lecherous remarks about his hair, of the chance to sample this delicacy, Bucky will fight him, national hero or not.

**8.43pm**  
A woman with a smile like an autopsy is saying something about fundraising for veterans and gesturing at her good-friend-Steve-Rogers-Captain-America, who's standing frozen with a meat skewer halfway to his mouth as every head in the room turns to where he's standing, and Bucky gets cramp in his left triceps. 

**9.13pm**  
“Sure, I’ll show you. Gotta go back to the kitchen first, though - if I don’t put this down in the next three minutes my fucking arm is going to fall off.”

It might even fall off before then. The cramp has turned into a shattering, shaking sensation that's driving all other thoughts out of his mind. Fuck being overawed by Captain America. If the man wants to sneak out the back door Bucky can help with that, but not until he gets rid of this goddamn slate.

Also, if the leftovers are gone before he gets his turn with them, he’s going to have a full screaming breakdown. Sure, no good deed etc., but nobody, not god nor man nor knight in straining formalwear, is coming between Bucky and his tepid vol-au-vents. But fate isn’t done fucking with him yet. 

Steve whisks the slate from Bucky’s shaking hands like it’s made of cardboard, the majestic asshole. He hasn’t accounted for its contents. There’s a shower of skewers and a few disconsolate _thwaps_ as the gobs of soft cheese hit the floor. A banana leaf drifts down to shroud the wreckage.

"Shit," says Captain America.

**9.43pm**  
"Yeah yeah, well. You know when you're a little kid and you pretend things," says Bucky. He's too tired, too stressed, he doesn't care. He's sitting on an upturned packing crate next to the big dumpsters with Steve Rogers and there's artisanal soft cheese on his shoes and his filter's fucked. "Me and my sisters used to play Howling Commandos and Rachel never let me be Cap."

Steve's face does something uncomfortable. It takes Bucky a beat to figure that it's because a guy who looks a couple of years younger than him at most says he played at being him as a kid. 

"Steve--" he says, and runs out of words, because what do you say to a history book cover in an existential crisis? He's half-tempted to put his hand over Steve's, but he doesn't because that would be stupid. Instead he blurts out "You have nice hands," which is worse. His application for Single Greatest Catastrophe in the New York Metropolitan Area is strengthening by the second.

"Oh," says Steve, staring at his nails. "Do I?" 

**10.16pm**  
Karlo: _If you're not back supervising cleanup in five minutes I will report you and believe me, I will enjoy it._

Bucky: _hey man you told me to stick with cap, i'm just following orders!_

Steve looks over his shoulder and laughs, warm against Bucky's cheek.

**Author's Note:**

> a little over half of this has been sitting in my drafts on life support since december 2018 but as we all know now time is fake so that doesn't matter
> 
> thanks to aeta for putting the concept of morgue files front and center in my brain today, my brain for going 'what if you finished this tho', and wednesday for being literally the smartest person in the world.


End file.
